Category: literary

A literary recap and also some beautiful things.

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I went to AWP last week, for what felt like a week. For you nonwriters, AWP is the biggest literary conference of the year. Workshops, lectures, readings, a bookfair big enough to kill any sane person’s love of books, famous writers all around, lots of glasses, lots of beards, lots of notebook scribbling, lots of beers. I schlepped apricots, trail mix, water, my phone, notebooks, and about ten pounds of books around the city of Boston for three days straight. Other things that occurred: lattes, reunions, inspiration, Anne Carson, free chocolate, free pens, free buttons, literary journals, poet swoons (see: Anne Carson), and I met my pen pal for the first time, with whom I have been corresponding for a year. Magic! Below are some tidbits from the weekend too good (read: weird &/or awesome) not to share.

 

“I believe that the future of poetry belongs to dead poets.” -Valzhyna Mort (poet)

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“I prefer myself to Charles Simic.” -James Meetze (poet)

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“You’re some kind of something and I like it.” -Dara Wier (poet)

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“They will try to make you choose between the things you love but you do not have to choose.” Muriel Rukeyser, as quoted by another passionate woman

THEY WILL TRY TO MAKE YOU CHOOSE BETWEEN THE THINGS YOU LOVE BUT YOU DO NOT HAVE TO CHOOSE. 

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“For nonconformity, the world whips you with displeasure.” -Emerson, as quoted by a college professor dude

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“I am just another person in all normal regards except for my love of lemurs.” -James Tate (poet), as quoted by another poet

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“Lanyards are a great way to humble people.” -Jacob Otting (poet & comedian)

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“This wig is terrific.” -Terrance Hayes, reading one of his poems (SWOON)

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And here are some patterns I am loving this week, by Phoebe Wahl.

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And that is all for now. Besides for the joy of another friend engaged, the speed of a new (old) car, the sound of the rain (rain! not snow! woah!), the crunch of breadcrust littered with seeds, and the feel of a hot mug in my hands.

 

Excitement! And a poem (Weston Cutter).

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Got my first poetry acceptance today in a Long Time and been jumping around the kitchen and yelling “Finally! Finally!!!!” a lot this morning. Feeling good. Two poems of mine will be forthcoming from Muzzle in mid-March for their Sex-Themed Issue. Alright! In the meantime, here’s a poem by Weston Cutter, a poet I really admire. He incorporates a vocabulary of the natural world that is very different from mine–it’s as if he uses the masculine nature words and I the feminine. I tend to like all poems of his that I read, and here’s one from a previous issue of Muzzle.

 

***

How to be ready for everything

is
to pick up yesterday + crack
its thick honey. How
to be ready is not pockets
but matches, the act
is never carry but burn or if not burn at least warm, the rote mem-
orization that is flame. How to be ready
for everything is to know
leaves turn, offer
their silver undersides when rain’s
coming, is to know you have to use
heat and hard soap to scrub all trace
of gathered apples
from your hands if you don’t want
the dog jumping lickwild. How
to be ready for everything is to know
you’ve got one name though
nobody knows what it is,
even you, and so there’s treebranch
and rocksalt, there’s shaved ice
and trampled grass, there’s a season
whose secrets haven’t been disclosed
but look at the sky, look what’s on its way.

—WESTON CUTTER

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Click here to see the poem formatted correctly & hear a recording of Weston Cutter reading it.

Calling All Typesetters in the Universe! Hear ye, hear ye!

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This is a call, a calling-out, an offer, a request, a hopeful question posed to the wind (to the internet):

* Do you know how to use a letterpress with agility?

* Do you live in the Northeast?

* Are you interested in the woods? Do you like cabins?

* Are you willing to work for free?

The last question is the ugliest, this I know. This is really a call for a friend with letterpress skills. Are you interested in being my friend? I have a frequently-updated blog and a really cool boyfriend! I have a lot of eggs to give away! I enjoy dancing even outside of dancehalls! I am short but can jump high! I don’t care if you have a weird haircut, in fact I like it! Do you want to embark on a literary project together?

Here’s the deal: I had a letterpress dude, Sean, who was going to be Head Typesetter but now he has to move back to Arizona. Sean’s a poet, we took a book arts class together in grad school, he excelled at it (big time), whereas I just hammered along, finishing with some pretty but unskilled books. I don’t have the real letterpress abilities that would allow me make books I’m proud to sell. That’s where YOU come in.

This is a project in its early stages. The state of Vermont has given me their seal of approval: the company is Press House Press. The vision for the press goes something like this:

Envision a small cabin where, in previous times, a family may have pressed their apple cider during autumn. Envision inside it: good lighting, a cider press, a letterpress. Perhaps a chair or two, or a small bed. No big equipment. Just enough to make some cider to quench our thirst (and the thirst of visitors) and a small letterpress to make pamphlets, chapbooks, cards, mini-broadsides.

Please note: the press house does not yet exist. The letterpress has not yet been purchased. This is a project on the road to actuality. If you help me build it, it will come.

If this wild, insanely human, deliciously rural and thoroughly unpaid position interests you, we should meet up at AWP and talk. If you’re not going to AWP, we can meet up on the internet. Either way, you should email me. I can tell you a little more about myself and a lot more about how this press is going to happen. Maybe you’re just the person to collaborate with me. Maybe we’re going to make some gorgeous and inspired little papergoods together. Goodness, I hope so.

With hope and a prayer,

Taylor Mardis Katz

“There has to be a libidinous delight in finding things and stuffing them in your pockets” (writing advice from W.G. Sebald).

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Since W.G. Sebald’s death, there has been much talk of W.G. Sebald. I have heard this talk and pondered through it, though I’ve never set foot into one of his books. This happens to me a lot: I hear about and read about and sometimes even discuss a piece of art without having actually seen or read or watched it. Because sometimes the discussion is more interesting than the art itself. Because I can’t get to everything. Because knowledge can be gleaned off the peripheral as well as the focal.

 

Below is part of a list of writing tips from W.G. Sebald, compiled by a couple of his students after his death. There are many more where these came from, but they’re more about fiction, and if you haven’t noticed, I’m allllll about poems. I like the list below because it’s a little wry, and because it emphasizes thievery. And also because it encourages me to do some things that I’m already doing, and a little positive reinforcement never hurts.

 

On Reading & Intertextuality

 

  • Read books that have nothing to do with literature.
  • Get off the main thoroughfares; you’ll see nothing there. For example, Kant’s Critique is a yawn but his incidental writings are fascinating.
  • There has to be a libidinous delight in finding things and stuffing them in your pockets.
  • You must get the servants to work for you. You mustn’t do all the work yourself. That is, you should ask other people for information, and steal ruthlessly from what they provide.
  • None of the things you make up will be as hair-raising as the things people tell you.
  • I can only encourage you to steal as much as you can. No one will ever notice. You should keep a notebook of tidbits, but don’t write down the attributions, and then after a couple of years you can come back to the notebook and treat the stuff as your own without guilt.
  • Don’t be afraid to bring in strange, eloquent quotations and graft them into your story. It enriches the prose. Quotations are like yeast or some ingredient one adds.
  • Look in older encyclopaedias. They have a different eye. They attempt to be complete and structured but in fact are completely random collected things that are supposed to represent our world.
  • It’s very good that you write through another text, a foil, so that you write out of it and make your work a palimpsest. You don’t have to declare it or tell where it’s from.
  • A tight structural form opens possibilities. Take a pattern, an established model or sub-genre, and write to it. In writing, limitation gives freedom.
  • If you look carefully you can find problems in all writers. And that should give you great hope. And the better you get at identifying these problems, the better you will be at avoiding them.

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Photo from here. Read the full list here. 

Broadsides are important; poems are important (broadside; poem).

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I believe that literature is important, and I believe that beauty is important, too. I believe in aesthetics, not for the sake of aesthetics, but for the sake of adding curation to the world. I believe in beautiful books of poems and I believe in broadsides, poems letter-pressed (letter-punched) into thick paper. One day, I will own a small letterpress, and I will make small books, beautiful books, books that have forests in their peripheral vision. They will be for sale, and they will be available for barter, too, because I believe less in money than I believe in beautiful items, a jar of brightpurple kimchi, a set of photographs with thick white borders, a hand-sanded cutting board. I believe in love and I believe in matrimony if you want it and I believe in admitting fault and in feeding oneself and one’s loved ones. In essence, I believe. As a result, I share this stanza that I love (by someone I know), and this whole poem, which I understand completely (by someone I do not know).

 

In a movie we see a young family live through
a tsunami. Sheltering in trees. I think of the man I might expect
to find unhurt in a tree above any awful thing. This man who
on Christmas I said I would marry. When I met him I dreamt
we went cheek-to-cheek to the peak of the dome of my room to speak
privately. When something comes true it is like a wreath in your body.

and

 

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(via BLACK LEMON)

Joe Brainard & White River Junction (writings & photos).

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White River Junction is where I live, and work, and eat. It is also where I yoga and latte and gossip and discover treasures. It is where I mail letters & where I show off my extensive hat collection. Joe Brainard passed through here on a bus once (probably more than once), and he wrote about it, and these days I’m reading Joe Brainard again because I think of him as a pick-me-up, even though he was mostly sad and worried about being too skinny and anxious about the concept of being a “painter” and the concept of love lasting. Then how does he make me so happy? Because he enjoyed being alive and wrote a lot just to do it and he drew pictures of things on tables and hung out with James Schuyler, one of my gay dead loves. And he had a good attitude, he did his exercises and illustrated books and drove places with friends. He was one of those charmers, I think. Here’s some of him.

 

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*top image is from The Best American Poetry blog and the bottom image is from my phone’s camera, taken while drinking black tea with milk & honey.

Sometimes people you don’t know yet are your friend (poem) (Gina Myers).

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Dear Gina Myers,

This poem was delivered to me by the Academy of American Poets. I read it and I knew you were my friend. I sent it to Misha, and said, “Read this poem please?” He read it sitting next to me on the couch, then turned to me and said, “Woah, that girl is your friend!”

Once, I read a tiny chapbook of poems, and I thought the girl who wrote it might be my friend, so I wrote her a letter, and now she actually is my friend. In fact, she’s engaged! I guess that’s neither here nor there. What I’m trying to say is: this poem is how I feel a lot of the time. I think you’re probably already rich with friendships, but if you want another one, hi! Want to get a latte sometime?

 

With smiles,

Taylor Katz

 

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For N & K

 

Otis on vinyl
carries from
the barn. Blessed
is this day. The camera
captures us youthful
& triumphant.
Blessed be this day,
a celebration
of friends coming
together. Last night,
surrounded by
those I love, I had wanted
to read Berrigan’s
“Words For Love,”
but I didn’t want to say
the heart breaks, even though I know
it’s true & the breaking
can be a good thing
sometimes, like the way
my heart shatters
a little each time
I think of my friends
& how lucky in life
I’ve been to get
to know them, to have
had the time to laugh &
drink & dance & to argue
& feel hurt too.
How can one possibly
say everything
that should be said?
These feelings
just feelings, not
defined by words.
To be overwhelmed,
caught in a whirlwind
& up to one’s
ankles in the creek
as lightning bugs
polka-dot the sky
& Otis, again Otis,
always Otis in my
memory, provides
the soundtrack.
Not every day
can be a good day
but this is one
of them, one
of the best days.